Come to the Dark Side

For years medical leadership has been the place to retire to once you’ve done your hard work on the wards. The image of a doctor hanging up their stethoscope, picking up a clipboard and joining the managers “dark side” is all too familiar.

Medical leadership, Healthcare management, Clinical lead, Quality lead – these are all ways of describing someone (a healthcare professional) who wants to make a difference, who wants to help not just one patient but every patient in that service.

Medical leadership is the zeitgeist! It is a growing field. It is a discipline of the young and dynamic. It is something that is relevant to you all. It is something that you will be expected to show in years to come.

As an individual student you can join the Faculty of Medical Leadership and Management (FMLM), do some reading, do a quality improvement project (QIP) and write that you have an interested in medical leadership on your CV.

What if you want to do more than just improve your CV?

Be an agent for change, found a student’s medical leadership and management society at your medical school!
It’s easy! First, find 10 student colleagues – the driven, the politically aware, the idealists, the power-mad and the ones that really care. Step 2 – give yourself a suitably pompous name. Step 3 – register your New “University of X Leaders of Tomorrow” society with you MedSoc or Students Union. Step 4 – Contact the FMLM to let them know you exist and want to join their revolution. Step 5 – Collaborate with the other student Medical Leadership Societies (MLS) around the UK. Step 6 – Hold a social. Step 7 – Find a local doctor who would love to talk about their career and recent success. Step 8 – Invite us all along. Step 9 – Write it on your CV. Step 10 – Leave a legacy.

At the present The University of Birmingham Students Medical Leadership Society is in contact with the FMLM and other similar groups at the Universities of Bristol, Barts and Oxford. We are looking to get in contact with every other society in the country. If you are a new or old MLS then please do get in touch, we would love to hear from you and are happy to help your societies in any way we can – we would also love to attend your events so please do send us an invite and we will do our best to attend and advertise it.

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Many thanks to everyone who attended the Birmingham Students Medical Leadership Society’s first ever lecture on November 7th 2013. The committee was extraordinarily pleased with the turn out and hope to see you all at our next lectures. We must also say a big thank you to Dr Nicholas Crombie for being our Inaugural speaker, he gave a fantastic lecture and we have received a number of rave reviews and requests for a follow up lecture next year!
Dr Crombie’s talk focussed on three main areas:
1) A short personal history focussing on why and how Dr Crombie became head of one of the UK’s best Pre-Hospital Emergency Medicine (PHEM) services and the first post-graduate dean in charge of PHEM trainees.
2) The majority of the lecture was a case history on the behind the scenes activity that was required to create the West Midlands Pre-Hospital Network and training program. In summary, over a decade ago it was realised that the UK was lagging behind other developed nations in our Emergency Medicine and Trauma service provisions. There were a number of disjointed and only partially trained services in place for major incidents. The British government and a number of leading health think-tanks put forward proposals for creating a modern effective service. Dr Crombie was a senior doctor in the West Midlands air ambulance charity, the BASICS program and had worked with the West Midlands Ambulance service. Dr Crombie was able to collect a team of senior doctors, nurses, paramedics and managers from all of the emergency medicine services and charities within the West Midlands together. This collaboration of ambulance service, charities, BASIC teams, CARE team and NHS Trusts was novel to the UK. The collaboration was able to tender for central government and was the first such scheme in the UK to be approved. Since the scheme’s approval 5 major trauma units have been established within the West Midlands and a new trauma desk was created at the Ambulance service HQ which can call on the help of a number of experienced teams that can be deployed within minutes to a major incident almost anywhere in the West Midlands.
This major reformation of a health service was truly inspirational, especially when it was achieved by a number of clinicians with relatively little accredited management training and without them giving up their clinical time, a true clinical leadership success story.
3) The last component of the evening was Dr Crombie’s thoughts on why this project had been successful and how simple basic principles could be applied to almost any other project. Dr Crombie’s 3 big principles were:
Collaborate – leave your ego’s at the door and try to put together a team that can work together. If you have to, invite everyone involved to a free dinner at your expense – even doctors don’t turn down free food!
Governance – establish a set of rules/guidelines that dictate how your project will be run. Try to get everyone involved singing off the same hymn sheet. A very good example of this from Dr Crombie’s case history was that all of the services involved in the scheme agreed to use the same emergency medicine kit and all follow the same Standard Operating Procedures (SOP), so that when the teams work together they almost work as one single effective team rather than distinct groups that cannot interact.
Resilience – the service you reform/create must withstand the test of time. If a project is solely driven by one person then it will collapse as soon as that person moves on. This is a well-known problem with the NHS as a whole, new managers always have “great new ideas” and as soon as that manager changes job all of their hard work goes to waste. To ensure that a project has resilience, the “project manager” must create a sense of purpose and ownership of the project within their teams. Members of the team must “buy in” to the goals of the project and one of the best ways of doing that is to ask the team members for their advice on how the project should proceed. If people feel a project was their idea then they are far more likely to work for it. This requires the manager to keep their ego on a short leash and to let their team take credit.
The take home message from this talk was that the days of doctors being purely clinical is over! If you want to be a consultant in any speciality in the future, you will need a basic underlying knowledge of management and leadership.
Upcoming events from the Birmingham Students Medical Leadership Society:
Wednesday 27th November LT3 Medical School, 6pm
‘Learning to Lead- Preparing the next generation of junior doctors for management’
By Mr Tim Smart, CEO Kings Hospital NHS Trust
Thursday 5th December LT3 Medical School, 6pm
‘Why should doctors get involved in management’
By Dr Mark Newbold, CEO of BHH NHS Trust
If you would like to get in touch with the society or attend any of our events please do contact us by email or via our Facebook group. We look forward to hearing from you.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/676838225676202/
med.leadership.soc.uob@gmail.com

Introduction
Computerised presentations are a part of every medical student's / junior doctor's life. Sometimes we give them, often we sleep through them and occasionally we even listen to them. They are the backbone of medical education besides traditional bed-side teaching, having rapidly replaced the now extinct OHR (Over Head Projector) acetate-sheet presentations of years gone-by.
The problem is that Doctors and medical students often struggle with creating and presenting coherent slides. This is most probably due to the general apathy most have for actually talking in front of an audience, or because those asked to present are often taken unawares, and therefore have little time to prepare. In these times of avolition or last-minute hurriedness, people often reach out for the industry standard of presentation production: PowerPoint.
PowerPoint is the most commonly used tool for making presentations because it is simple to use and comes with a whole load of free templates. Unfortunately, most of these templates look disgusting. If a template doesn't look disgusting, then it is most certainly overused and you run the risk of having a presentation that looks identical to the student before you at the weekly seminar teaching - a scenario that can be easily likened to turning up to a lecture wearing exactly the same clothes as another person in the room, which would just be awkward. Another problem with PowerPoint is the phenomenon of 'Death By Powerpoint,' which refers to the general boredom and apathy experienced by those who have received way too much information in way too short a space of time via a series of over-cramped, poorly stylised slides.
But why on earth do you care?
People should care about 'Death By Powerpoint' because if your presentations cause people to zone out, then you are not getting your message across. And if you aren't getting your message across then you. are. not. presenting. at. all. (take a moment to reflect on that particularly Zen statement).
Let me explain using a metaphor, if I am a sales person and I present my talk with well-designed slides, in an enthusiastic and well-rehersed manner to an appropriate audience I will make more sales than if I present using poorly designed slides at the last minute. Similarly, in Medicine if I present well designed, aesthetic slides I am more likely to convey accurate information to my colleagues that may very well be retained and enjoyed by all involved.
Of course, this blog assumes a degree of presentation-related Altruism. The recommendations I am about to make require you to 'step out of the mould' and say 'no' to poor presentations. They require you to forgive others for the presentations they have inflicted on you in the past. You will 'lead by example'.
Unfortunately I am not capable (or qualified) to make you an excellent designer, nor can I give you the motivation to feel as passionately about design aesthetics as i do when all you've got to do is slam some slides together for your monthly journal club. But what I can do is present to you a series of resources that might tempt you away from the horrific PowerPoint templates that currently infest medical student seminars and young doctors presentations.
If you really couldn't care less, then I suggest using Prezi, a website where you can make quite eccentric looking presentations rapidly and for free. The only problem is that Prezi became cliched even before its debut and you risk inflicting travel sickness on your poor audience, what with all the funky zooming in and out of slides that occurs during a typical Prezi presentation (you will know what I mean if you've ever seen one).
So, without further ado, here are my top 5 tips for making your presentations look smoother and more polished... Irrespective of whether the contents of your talk are any good.
Step One: Typography
Get yourself a good font. Typography is really important, when you speak to someone you use a variety of tones and gestures to convey the meaning of the words you are using. Fonts are effectively the printed version of your tone and gestures. Good font choice can help give 'umph' to a particular point in your presentation and help give character to what you are saying. Of course, it's important to remain professional so 'Wingbats' might not be your first choice, but anything that you could envisage on a nice business card is probably a good shout. Fonts are usually something you have to pay for if you want anything beyond the set given to you when you download Microsoft Word (for example). However, there are whole hosts of free fonts available from sites like [dafont])(http://www.dafont.com). The key is to be willing to trawl through these sites to find fonts that are actually useful! Beware those fancy fonts unless you know your audience can take it!
If you are stuck on choosing a font, which is a common complaint, then maybe this flow diagram will help!
Oh yeah, and never ever use Comic Sans. Ever.
Step Two: Colour
A good font isn't going to get you very far on its own. You need a solid colour scheme to bring your presentation alive. It seems blunt to say, but some people are not very good at picking colours that go well with one another. This is well evidenced in PowerPoint presentations where the yellow-text-on-blue-background is far too common. I mean yeah, in theory blue and yellow 'compliment' each other, but thats where the relationship between blue and yellow should stay... in theory. Luckily there are some useful colour palette websites available out there, which will match colours for you...
Step Three: Structure
After you've picked a sensible font and a suitable colour scheme, it's time to think about the structure or layout of your slides. It's absolutely crucial that you avoid putting too much information on your slides even if you are giving an academic presentation. An overloaded slide is about as useful as a dead cat. At this point, some of you may be tempted to resort to those dodgy PowerPoint default templates but there is another way! There are sites out there that have some pretty fresh templates you can use and they are completely free! They are sure to add a bit of spice to your slide's aesthetic.
There will probably be a separate tutorial on this in the future, but basic principles apply. As a general rule stick to Left Alignment *and avoid *Central Alignment like the plague.
Step Four: Imagery
Images help to spice up a presentation, but try and keep them related to the topic. Google Images is a great resource but remember that most images will be a low resolution and will be poorly suited to being shown blown up full-size on a presentation screen. Low resolution images are a presentation killer and should be avoided at all costs.
For high-quality images try sites like Flikr or ShutterStock.
Step Five: Consider Software
The interface of Powerpoint does not lend itself well to having images dropped in and played with to make nice looking layouts. I would recommend Adobe Photoshop for this kind of work, but not everyone will have access to such expensive software. Cheap alternatives include Photoshop Elements amongst others.
Once you have created slides in Photoshop it is quick and easy to save them as JPEG files and drag and drop them into PowePoint. Perhaps that can be a tutorial for another time...
Step 5: Additional Stuff
Presentations typically lack significance, structure, simplicity and rehearsal. Always check over your presentation and ask 'is this significant to my audience?' Always structure your presentation in a logical manner and (it is recommended you) include a contents slide and summary slide to tie things together. Keep your verbal commentary simple and keep the slides themselves even more simple than that. Simplicity is crucial. Once you have produced your beautiful slides with wonderful content you will want to practice them. Practice, Practice, Practice. Rehearsing even just once can make a good presentation even better.
Conclusion:
This blog entry has covered some basic points on how to improve your medical presentations and has given a series of useful online resources. Putting effort into designing a presentation takes time and motivation, for those without these vital ingredients we recommend Prezi (whilst it is still relatively new and fresh). Perhaps the rest of you will only use these tips for the occasional important presentation. However, I hope that soon after you start approaching presentations with a little more respect for their importance and potential, you too will find a desire to produce high-quality, aesthetically pleasing talks.
LARF - Mood: damn tired and feeling guilty that I just wrote this blog instead of revising haematology notes.
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This month’s case is by Barbara J. Mroz, M.D. and Robin R. Preston, Ph.D., author of Lippincott’s Illustrated Reviews: .Physiology (ISBN: 9781451175677). For more information, or to purchase your copy, visit: http://tiny.cc/PrestonLIR, with 15% off using the discount code: MEDUCATION.
The case below is followed by a choice of diagnostic tests. Select the one lettered selection that would be most helpful in diagnosing the patient’s condition.
The Case
A 54-year-old male 2 pack-per-day smoker presents to your office complaining of cough and shortness of breath (SOB). He reports chronic mild dyspnea on exertion with a daily cough productive of clear mucus. During the past week, his cough has increased in frequency and is now productive of frothy pink-tinged sputum; his dyspnea is worse and he is now short of breath sometimes even at rest. He has had difficulty breathing when lying flat in bed and has spent the past two nights sleeping upright in a recliner.
On physical examination, he is a moderately obese male with a blood pressure of 180/80 mm Hg, pulse of 98, and respiratory rate of 22. His temperature is 98.6°F. He becomes winded from climbing onto the exam table. Auscultation of the lungs reveals bilateral wheezing and crackles in the lower posterior lung fields. There is pitting edema in the lower extremities extending up to the knees.
Question
Which if the following tests would be most helpful in confirming the correct diagnosis?
A. Spirometry
B. Arterial blood gas
C. Complete blood count
D. B-type natriuretic peptide blood test
E. Electrocardiogram
Answer?
The correct answer is B-type natriuretic peptide blood test.
Uncomfortable breathing, or feeling short of breath, is a common medical complaint with multiple causes. When approaching a patient with dyspnea, it is helpful to remember that normal breathing requires both a respiratory system that facilitates gas exchange between blood and the atmosphere, and a cardiovascular system that transports O2 and CO¬2 between the lungs and tissues. Dysfunction in either system may cause dyspnea, and wheezing (or bronchospasm) may be present in both cardiac and pulmonary disease. In this patient, the presence of lower extremity edema and orthopnea (discomfort when lying flat) are both suggestive of congestive heart failure (CHF). Elevated blood pressure (systolic of 180) and a cough productive of frothy pink sputum may also be associated symptoms. While wheezing could also be caused by COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) in the setting of chronic tobacco use, the additional exam findings of lung crackles and edema plus systolic hypertension are all more consistent with CHF.
What does the B-type natriuretic peptide blood test tell us?
When the left ventricle (LV) fails to maintain cardiac output (CO) at levels required for adequate tissue perfusion, pathways are activated to increase renal fluid retention. A rising plasma volume increases LV preload and sustains CO via the Frank-Starling mechanism. Volume loading also stimulates cardiomyocytes to release atrial- (ANP) and B-type (BNP) natriuretic peptides. BNP has a longer half-life than ANP and provides a convenient marker for volume loading. Plasma BNP levels are measured using immunoassay; levels >100 pg/mL are suggestive of overload resulting in heart failure.
How does heart failure cause dyspnea?
Increasing venous pressure increases mean capillary hydrostatic pressure and promotes fluid filtration from the vasculature. Excess filtration from pulmonary capillaries causes fluid accumulation within the alveoli (pulmonary edema) and interferes with normal gas exchange, resulting in SOB. Physical signs and symptoms caused by high volume loading include: (1) Lung crackles, caused by fluid within alveoli (2) Orthopnea. Reclining increases pulmonary capillary hydrostatic pressure through gravitational effects, worsening dyspnea when lying flat. (3) Pitting dependent edema caused by filtration from systemic capillaries, an effect also influenced by position (causing edema in the lower legs as in our ambulatory patient or in dependent areas like the sacrum in a bedridden patient).
What would an electrocardiogram show?
Heart failure can result in LV hypertrophy and manifest as a left axis deviation on an electrocardiogram (ECG), but some patients in failure show a normal ECG. An ECG is not a useful diagnostic tool for dyspnea or CHF per se.
Wouldn’t spirometry be more suitable for diagnosing the cause of dyspnea in a smoker?
Simple spirometry will readily identify the presence of airflow limitation (obstruction) as a cause of dyspnea. It's a valuable test to perform in any smoker and can establish a diagnosis of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) if abnormal. While this wheezing patient is an active smoker who could have airflow obstruction, the additional exam findings above point more to a diagnosis of CHF.
What would an arterial blood gas show?
An arterial blood gas measures arterial pH, PaCO¬2, and PaO2. While both CHF and COPD could cause derangements in the values measured, these abnormalities would not necessarily be diagnostic (e.g., a low PaO2 could be seen in both conditions, as could an elevated PaCO¬2).
Would a complete blood count provide useful information?
A complete blood count could prove useful if anemia is a suspected cause of dyspnea.
Test result
BNP was elevated (842 pg/mL), consistent with CHF. Diuretic treatment was initiated to help reduce volume overload and an afterload reducing agent was started to lower blood pressure and improve systolic function.

2014 is already more than a month old (if you can believe it) and with each passing day, the world we live in is speeding towards breakthroughs in every sphere of life. We're running full tilt, wanting to be bigger and better than we were the day or the hour before. Every passing day reinvents the 'cutting edge' of technology, including medical progress and advancement. Gone are the medieval days when doctors were considered all knowing deities, while medicine consisted of leeches being used to drain 'bad blood'. Nowadays, health isn't just about waiting around until you pick up an infection, then going to your local GP to get treated; in today's world it's all about sustaining your wellbeing. And for that, the new kid on the block is biohacking.
Biohacking is the art and science of maximizing your biological potential. As a hacker aims to gain complete control of the system he's trying to infiltrate, be it social or technological; similarly a biohacker aims to obtain full control of his own biology. Simply put, a biohacker looks for techniques to improve himself and his way of life. Before you let your imagination run away with you and start thinking of genetic experiments gone wrong, let me assure you that a biohack is really just about any activity you can do to increase your capabilities or advance your wellbeing. Exercising daily can be a biohack. So can doing the crossword or solving math sums, if it raises your IQ by a few points or improves your general knowledge. What characterizes biohacking is the end goal and the consequent modification of activities to achieve that goal.
So what kind of goals would a biohacker have? World domination? Not quite. Adding more productive hours to the day and more productivity to those hours? Check. Eliminating stress and it's causes from their lives? Check. Improving mood, memory and recall, and general happiness? You bet.
So the question arises; aren't we all biohackers of sorts? After all, the above mentioned objectives are what everyone aspires to achieve in their lives at one point or the other. unfortunately for all the lazy people out there (including yours truly), biohacking involves being just a tad bit more pro active than just scribbling down a list of such goals as New Year resolutions!
There are two main approaches to selecting a biohack that works for you- the biggest aim and the biggest gain. The biggest aim would be targeting those capabilities, an improvement in which would greatly benefit you. This could be as specific as improving your public speaking skills or as general as working upon your diet so you feel more fit and alert. In today's competitive, cut throat world, even the slightest edge can ensure that you reach the finish line first.
The biggest gain would be to choose a technique that is low cost- in other words, one that is beneficial yet doesn't burn a hole through your pocket!
It isn't possible to give a detailed description of all the methods pioneering biohackers have initiated, but here are some general areas that you can try to upgrade in your life:
Hack your diet- They say you are what you eat. Your energy levels are related to what you eat, when you take your meals, the quantity you consume etc. your mood and mental wellbeing is greatly affected by your diet. I could go on and on, but this point is self expanatory. You need to hack your diet! Eat healthier and live longer.
Hack your brain- Our minds are capable of incredible things when they're trained to function productively. Had this not been the case, you and I would still be sitting in our respective caves, shivering and waiting for someone to think long enough to discover fire. You don't have to be a neuroscientist to improve your mental performance-studies show that simply knowing you have the power to improve your intelligence is the first step to doing it.
Hack your abilities- Your mindset often determines your capacity to rise to a challenge and your ability to achieve. For instance, if you're told that you can't achieve a certain goal because you're a woman, or because you're black or you're too fat or too short, well obviously you're bound to restrict yourself in a mental prison of your own shortcomings. But it's a brave new world so push yourself further. Try something new, be that tacking on an extra lap to your daily exercise routine or squeezing out the extra time to do some volunteer work. Your talents should keep growing right along with you.
Hack your age- You might not be able to do much about those birthday candles that just keep adding up...but you can certainly hack how 'old' you feel. Instead of buying in on the notion that you decline as you grow older, look around you. Even simple things such as breathing and stamina building exercises can change the way you age.
We have a responsibility to ourselves and to those around us to live our lives to the fullest. So maximise your potential, push against your boundaries, build the learning curve as you go along. After all, health isn't just the absence of disease but complete physical, mental and social wellbeing and biohacking seems to be Yellow Brick Road leading right to it!